Posts Tagged ‘PRT’

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Third Personal Rapid Transit Test Track Commences Operation

Sunday, January 29th, 2012

Modutram recently opened the station portion of their new full-scale test track in Guadalajara, Mexico thus becoming the third PRT supplier to have an operating test track. The system is currently running with one vehicle and successfully demonstrates switching capabilities.

Station and associated test track

Station and associated test track

The Modutram program is funded by the Mexican Government and is undertaken with university cooperation. The intent is to develop and commercialize a PRT system ideally suited to Mexican applications but capable of also being deployed elsewhere. The focus is on costs and $6M per one-way track-mile is the approximate cost target.

Vehicle approaching station

Vehicle approaching station

A variety of vehicles is being planned with the initial vehicle being designed for slow, short trips with standees. A hybrid vehicle is used in order to reduce the number of expensive batteries required. Electric motor and internal combustion engine options can function completely independently of each other. Vehicles have four-wheel steering and closely follow guideway sidewalls which are constructed to a 2mm lateral tolerance. Sidewall following is accomplished by two guide wheels mounted just ahead of and behind each road wheel. Physical following was selected over remote sensing in order to reduce development time. Remote sensing could be added at a later date.

Hybrid vehicle

Hybrid vehicle

A unique operational feature is that the vehicles will keep moving slowly through stations without completely stopping. This operation has proved successful when tested with handicapped passengers. Passengers alight as soon as the vehicle enters the station while others board just before it leaves the station. If no one boards, or if boarding is incomplete, the vehicle will stop in the station. Stations are arranged so as to keep boarding and alighting passengers separate (even to the point of having separate staircases).

System characteristics

System characteristics

 

Elevated track. Note superelevation.

Elevated track. Note superelevation.

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World’s First and Largest Urban PRT System Announced

Tuesday, December 13th, 2011

 We are posting ULTra Global’s recent press release here due to its significance. This is not an endorsement of ULTra over any other PRT system, only a recognition of the significance of this milestone for PRT in general.

The Punjab Government has awarded a contract for the world’s first urban Passenger Rapid Transport (PRT) system in Amritsar, India to Ultra Fairwood.  

At peak capacity the PRT system can carry up to 100,000 passengers a day on a 3.3km elevated guideway in over 200 specialist vehicles between seven stations, making it the world’s largest PRT system to date. 

Elevated Guideways

Elevated Guideways

Financed entirely by private funding on a build, own, operate transfer (BOOT) basis, the passenger services will go live in 2014. 

Although the cost of the scheme is subject to commercial confidentiality, it demonstrates that a large scale urban PRT system can be delivered on a financially viable, fare-based model and offer very real returns for financial backers.

The Ultra PRT system uses driverless, electric-battery powered, computer driven, zero emission vehicles called “pods” which :

  • can each carry 4-6 people in privacy and comfort
  • provide an on-demand, non-stop journey to anywhere on the system
  • use one third of the energy of a car,  and are virtually silent with no emissions
  • travel on a segregated guideway that can run over/alongside roads, rail tracks and buildings
  • never get held up by congestion, so reduce travel time
Bi-level Station

Bi-level Station

Amritsar is home to the holiest shrine of Sikhs, the Golden Temple, and is rich in historical, religious and heritage sites.  As such it’s a big draw for large numbers of visitors, especially during festivals and religious events, as pilgrims flock to the area.  Up to 500,000 people visit the Golden Temple on important religious festival days.  The PRT system will ease congestion and reduce the current long travel transit times.

The route will focus on taking passengers from the railway and bus stations to the Golden Temple and will:

  • take  35% of daily visitors to the Golden Temple
  • save up to 30 minutes on the current journey times
  • attract passengers from a wide geographic and demographic profile, from regular commuters to “one off day trip” users.
  • run from 04.00 – 24.00 seven days a week
  • charge fares competitive with alternative modes such as taxis and autorickshaws. 

 “The Punjab Government and city of Amritsar are leading the world in the application of a PRT system to provide volume transport in a major city environment.  As a result Ultra Fairwood is also in discussions with the authorities in other major Asian cities which suffer from major transportation infrastructure issues – congestion, space constraints, pollution problems, capacity restrictions and passenger service issues. The Ultra PRT system can help to solve these issues. 

“In one city by installing a PRT system we could potentially reduce a current journey of up to one hour in peak hours to around  seven minutes, in another country we may be able to reduce the number of cars on a major city’s streets by up to 20%.  People are at last starting to understand how this innovative technology can play a role in city transport solutions” said Ultra Fairwood’s CFO and Deputy CEO Alan Moore.

A sentiment echoed by Fraser Brown, MD of Ultra Global PRT, “The pod PRT system is an idea whose time has well and truly come.  Using British technology and know how, we’ve proved it works at Heathrow and now with Fairwood we’re creating bigger systems, on larger  routes, with more stations and pods. 

“We’ll be carrying 35% of the visitors in the area and removing 2.2m car trips in Amritsar per annum. It’s the future of environmental green travel. 

“Research has shown that by 2020, there could be between 50 to over 600 PRT system installations world wide. A real achievement for a system that came out of research from Bristol University.”

“Ultra Global sees the confidence that the Punjab Government have shown in PRT as further evidence of the growing sentiment amongst architects, transport planners and governments that PRT systems can sustainably and quickly transform an urban transport environment and provide users and other stakeholders with another viable transport mode in which to manage their cities and campuses.” Brown adds.

Ultra Fairwood is a collaboration between Ultra and Fairwood created in 2010 bringing the revolutionary Ultra technology to Asia.   Ultra Fairwood conceives, designs, finances, constructs and operates complete PRT solutions, typically on a BOOT basis.  The company is working on PRT projects for cities, campus environments and airports.

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Personal Rapid Transit a Hot Topic at Meeting Between USDOT and Swedish Counterparts

Thursday, December 8th, 2011

Representatives of the US Department of Transportation met in Washington DC last week for one and a half days to further advance their Memorandum of Cooperation with their Swedish counterparts on sustainable transportation. The officials from the two governments were joined by members of academia, consultants and suppliers/vendors. After joint meetings, subgroups met to discuss livability, multimodal station area planning, personal rapid transit/group rapid transit/automated transit networks (PRT/GRT/ATN) and railway technologies.

The four subgroups agreed that they all needed to collaborate since there is potentially considerable synergy between their areas of focus.

The PRT/GRT/ATN group agreed on a number of ways the two countries could work together to better understand and consider the potential for these technologies to help solve transportation issues. After the meetings, most members of this group toured the Morgantown PRT system after which Hans Larsen, San Jose Director of Transportation said, ““I (and I believe everyone in the group) thought the Morgantown PRT system tour was exceptional.  The system serves a very important transportation function for the Morgantown community.  It has high ridership and cost effective operations.  And it provides inspiration that automated transit is not a far out idea for the future; it works with 40 year old technology. “

The results of the meetings include the following:

  • Agreement between the Cities of San Jose and Uppsala to coordinate and share information about their respective efforts to investigate and potentially implement ATN systems.
  • Undertake workshops, surveys and develop a website to find out what people in different cities are looking for in transportation solutions (including their potential desire for ATN and estimates of probable ATN ridership).
  • A strategic plan should be developed outlining how ATN could be leveraged to the best advantage of transportation overall in the next 30 to 40 years.
  • Pursue more university collaboration.
  • Develop an ATN planning guidebook (probably through the Transportation Cooperative Research Program process).
  • Explore partnerships with private industry on development and manufacturing of ATN systems
  • Help facilitate further research and development of ATN demonstration projects
  • Seek a more comprehensive USDOT consideration of ATN as a compliment to existing transportation systems involving FTA (transit), FHWA (highways and parking), FAA (airports), and FRA (high speed rail).
  • Convene sessions on ATN at the 2013 meeting of the Transportation Research Board.

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Personal Rapid Transit Influence on Mode Shift to Transit

Sunday, October 23rd, 2011

Recent work by Joerg Schweizer  finds a significant mode shift to public transit when the level of service is similar to that of personal rapid  transit (PRT). Professor Schweizer conducted stated-preference public surveys in European cities that make no mention of PRT but ask people to choose the transit characteristics that would make them switch from private to public modes. When offered a nearby station, a clean and air-conditioned vehicle, short waiting times, no transfers and a guaranteed seat, (a combination only feasible with personal rapid transit) transit mode share increased dramatically – often by more than double. Note that the surveys assume a widespread system with fares equivalent to present public transit fares. Professor Schweizer also quotes research by Tegner with similar results.

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Personal Rapid Transit and Testosterone

Monday, July 18th, 2011

I have recently spent quite a bit of time meeting with and/or discussing PRT with different early-stage suppliers. The common theme seems to be that there is just too much testosterone in this business! Almost every vendor strongly believes that their solution is by far the best and that all others have fatal or near-fatal flaws. Gentlemen (there are no ladies in this group), it is in your own best interests to be a bit more humble and to not discount your competitors, they are generally smarter than you give them credit for.

Oftentimes when a competitor’s weaknesses are pointed out to me, I am aware that they are working on improvements and/or that these same weaknesses are not as serious as made out and/or are in fact strengths in some situations. I hope that all vendors are aware that marketing one’s strengths is more effective than marketing the competition’s weaknesses.

Those vendors who are in the very early stages should note that it has been many years since I have heard any representative of the three  vendors with commercially-available systems make a derogatory statement about any other! In fact these three vendors cooperate well in their efforts related to the Advanced Transit Association.

The table below attempts to summarize the stage of development that the significant vendors are in. I have no intention of mis-characterizing anyone’s efforts. If I have omitted or incorrectly categorized a company or two, please let me know. An open guideway system is one where the vehicles steer themselves (as opposed to a captive bogey system where the guideway steers the vehicles). Engineering design means more than pretty illustrations on a website. By Test Track I mean an active full-scale track demonstrating switching. A commerical project is one for which the vendor is being paid and is under contract (I realize I am giving ULTra-Fairwood the benefit of the doubt on Amritsar).

PRT Technology Development

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Some Thoughts on Group Rapid Transit

Wednesday, June 29th, 2011

The Morgantown PRT system which has been operating in Morgantown West Virginia since 1975 is actually a group rapid transit system (GRT). GRT systems have larger vehicles and passengers are typically required to share rides with others going to the same destination(s). These vehicles also typically accommodate standees thereby fitting more passengers into a smaller space. As accustomed as we are to large trains and buses, many believe that larger GRT vehicles make more sense than smaller personal rapid transit (PRT) vehicles. But do they?

Morgantown PRT

Morgantown PRT

The answer is not simple. It depends on many factors. Larger vehicles require larger stations and more substantial guideways. Thus, the capital costs can be higher. The operating savings resulting from carrying more passengers in fewer vehicles can be offset by the additional cost of running larger empty vehicles during off-peak periods.

Because of the standees, GRT vehicles cannot accelerate or decelerate as quickly as PRT vehicles can. This requires greater separation (headway, or time between vehicles) in order to meet the same safety criteria. This in turn means that GRT’s capacity gains are less than would be expected by just comparing vehicle capacities.

2getthere GRT

2getthere GRT

GRT cannot match the high level of service of PRT where everyone gets a seat, nobody waits for more than about a minute and trips are nonstop. With GRT, seats are in relatively short supply. Passengers have to wait (typically up to about five minutes) for other passengers to fill the vehicle. In addition each vehicle may make a number of stops along the way.

The requirement for GRT vehicles to wait for passengers to arrive who all share the same destination(s) means that GRT does not function very well when there are numerous stations in a system. Either the wait times get quite long or most vehicles are nowhere near full.

Nonetheless, GRT can carry more passengers per hour along a guideway. Increased guideway capacity can be a useful attribute for a networked PRT system where there is intense demand between a few station pairs, but the majority of the demand can be handled by PRT vehicles. In this scenario, GRT service between the busy station pairs can be integrated with PRT service elsewhere. If the GRT vehicles can run on the PRT track, it could be feasible to intermingle the vehicles, changing the fleet mix to meet demand fluctuations. Vectus is developing a GRT vehicle that will run on their PRT track. Another solution that could achieve a similar result could be to platoon PRT vehicles together (either physically or electronically). Forming and breaking the platoons in stations could eliminate safety issues associated with doing so on the fly.

Personal rapid transit systems may be well advised to develop ride sharing/platooning/GRT options to meet the capacity demands that are bound to arise as applications become larger and more diverse. Some may bemoan the need to sacrifice some of the “personal” aspects but, in many countries, the demand for mass transportation will predominate. The distinction between PRT and GRT may become blurred.

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Heathrow Personal Rapid Transit System – Unsolicited Tweets/Quotes

Thursday, June 16th, 2011

Loving the pod!

It’s a fantastic idea, it really does promote not only a great image of Heathrow adopting cutting edge technology but is also fast and convenient!

Used the Heathrow Pod at Terminal 5 on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week. I was delighted with it. The staff were helpful and obliging, the Pod call station was very easy to use, the instructions in the Pod itself were very good and clear. The whole process was quick and efficient, it was much easier than taking the bus, and quicker.

Journey starts in my own personal pod at #Heathrow. Makes the airport fun again.

Finally got to use the LHR T5 pods this morning. Truly excellent!

Love T5 & those pods that take you to and from the terminal

Absolutely love the T5 pods.

At LHR t5 – they have personal driverless pods to take you from parking to check in. Fantastic things!

The pod train from business parking to t5 is surely the most exciting form of transport I’ve been on in a long time

The Heathrow Pod – we live in the future! Wider application pls!

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Personal Rapid Transit Reliability

Thursday, April 7th, 2011

Personal rapid transit (PRT) was originally envisioned as a new mode of urban transit. As such, extreme reliability was not required. It is appropriate to examine PRT’s reliability potential a little more closely now that it is being implemented in airports and under consideration for applications where reliability is very important, if not vital.

Reliability can be defined as the percentage of trips that meet predefined parameters. In a PRT system these parameters could be, for example, 50% of people wait less than one minute and 95% wait less than three minutes. Based on parameters such as these, the 2getthere Masdar PRT system is operating at 99.3% and the ULTra Heathrow PRT system achieved 99.6% during passenger trials. By contrast, the Morgantown PRT system achieves about 98.5%. All of these are considerably higher than transit level of service A which is defined as 97.5%.

Let’s examine what these percentages really mean. 97.5% reliability means that 25 trips out of one thousand (one in 40) do not meet requirements. So, if you have forty work trips a month on a bus system operating at level of service A, you can expect to be late for work, or late home, once a month.

98.5% means 15 trips per thousand do not meet requirements. This is 1.6 times (25/15) more reliable than 97.5%. Similarly 99.6% is 6.25 times (25/4) more reliable than transit level of service A.

PRT system developers can predict reliability by knowing the mean time between failures for critical components. It is good to see that both ULTra and 2getthere are achieving public service reliability values similar to those commonly seen on airport people movers. This implies that their statistical analyses of reliability issues were accurate.

While it is acceptable on most systems for a small percentage of passengers to receive slightly lower than desirable service every day, the question arises as to how often the system will fail completely and how is such failure defined. Let’s define complete failure as the entire system breaking down for 15 minutes and then immediately resuming full service. If the system we are considering has 0.0% reliability of serving essentially all passengers in 0 minutes and 99.5% reliability of serving essentially all passengers in 3 minutes, it is clear that the reliability at 15 minutes will be extremely high. This means that the chances of such a breakdown from known causes of failure will be extremely remote.

Extensive breakdowns are typically caused by unknown causes of failure which, by definition, cannot be statistically estimated. These failures are of two basic types – those that also impact most surrounding systems and those that only impact the system of concern. The latter type is the one that must be protected against. Fortunately it should be extremely rare. Nonetheless, if the PRT system is vital to facility operations, breakdowns must be mitigated.

PRT system breakdown mitigation usually takes the form of avoiding single points of failure and providing multiple backups or redundancies. Examples include alternative guideways or routings that can route passengers around a temporary guideway issue, backup power sources, redundant computer systems, emergency walkways and backup bus systems. Rather than fail completely, a good PRT system should have the ability to provide degraded, but acceptable, service at all times except when the failure is an event that is so significant as to shut down all other transportation systems in the area.

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Personal Rapid Transit Capacity

Sunday, January 9th, 2011

The burgeoning interest in personal rapid transit (PRT) in India is highlighting the issue of PRT capacity. This is a fairly complex topic that will be dealt with fairly briefly here. Note: network capacity is much more complex than just the guideway capacity that is dealt with here. PRT capacity is complex because it is impacted by a number of issues:

Brick wall stopping (BWS) criteria. This is a railroad safety criterion that many believe not to be applicable to PRT. Basically BWS requires that a train must be able to stop before hitting a preceding train if that preceding train instantaneously turns into a stationary brick wall. In order to meet BWS the time between trains (or T-Pods in the case of PRT) must be adjusted based on speed and the maximum available, or allowable, deceleration.

Deceleration. The maximum deceleration is a function of the available friction and of whether passengers are standing or sitting, wearing seat belts, etc. The available friction or deceleration force varies with the type of PRT system. PRT systems driven and decelerated by linear induction motors rely on their motors for their primary breaking force and are typically independent of friction and thus weather. The maximum breaking deceleration they apply is typically less than what is available. Rubber-tired PRT systems, on the other hand, are dependent on the friction between their tires and the riding surface which can be dramatically impacted by weather. These systems will usually have weather mitigation plans aimed at maintaining friction above about 0.25G where G is the force of gravity.

Minimum headway. This is the minimum time between vehicles measured from the front of one vehicle to the front of the other. For BWS criteria, it varies from about 1.4 seconds with 0.50G deceleration force at 15 mph to about 3.2 seconds with 0.25G deceleration force at 30 mph. Without BWS criteria many suppliers claim they will achieve minimum headways of 0.5 seconds. Cabintaxi demonstrated 0.5 second PRT headways but never proved endurance or safety at these headways. We therefore believe it prudent to plan for minimum headways of no less than 1.0 seconds. Headway is strongly tied to capacity since reducing headway by half theoretically doubles capacity.

Occupancy. This is the number of passengers per T-pod. Occupancy is also strongly tied to capacity since doubling the occupancy theoretically doubles capacity. However increasing PRT occupancy during peak hours usually involves ride sharing. This can be easily accomplished on small systems with few stations but is difficult to accomplish on large systems with many stations. Imagine how long a passenger bound to station 57 in a 100 station system would have to wait for another to arrive also bound for station 57. Ride sharing protocols to overcome this problem will be the subject of a future article.

The table below provides the theoretical guideway capacity in passengers per hour based on variations in the parameters discussed above. The reasonable capacity of PRT guideways is seen to range between about 1,000 and 14,000 passengers per hour. Since PRT systems tend to cost much less than other fixed guideway systems, it is usually useful to compare the costs required to meet the capacity demand.

Capacity2

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Masdar Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) Opens

Thursday, December 9th, 2010

On Sunday, November 28th, the Masdar PRT system opened to the public. To quote Larry Fabian, 2getthere, the manufacturer, got there. 2getthere operates the system with the support of Singapore Mass Rapid Transit. Masdar City is a new carbon-free city being developed adjacent to Abu Dhabi in the UAE.

The system has 10 passenger and 3 freight vehicles serving 2 passenger and 3 freight stations connected by approximately one mile of track. The system is in operation 18 hours a day, seven days a week serving the Masdar Institute of Technology. Trips take about 2 and a half minutes and are presently free of charge. Average wait times are expected to be about 30 seconds.

Masdar PRT Station

Masdar PRT Station

Robbert Lohmann, Marketing Director for 2getthere, is quick to point out that the elaborate stations are not necessarily reflective of what a station should look like, but more an indication of what one could look like, if desired.

As mentioned previously, it is unlikely that this system will be extended throughout the entire Masdar City as originally planned. However, it is hoped it will be expanded beyond the extent of the present rather limited system.

The Heathrow ULTra PRT system recently achieved 99.6% availability during four weeks of passenger trials. We look forward to receiving availability results from Masdar. It will bode well for PRT if they are in a similar range. To put 99.6% in perspective, it means 4 trips in a thousand do not go as planned. This is six times more reliable than transit level of service A for transit reliability as defined in TRB’s Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) Report 100: Transit Capacity and Quality of Service Manual, where 25 trips per thousand are permitted to be late.

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